I see a magazine on Abdel ’Alim’s desk. I sneak inside the shop and pick it up. It is folded open to a page with an ad for the film Passion and Vengeance, starring Ismahan and Yusuf Wahbi. I pick up the magazine and take it outside. I show it to father: “Ismahan has a new film out.” He says: “That’s an old one. She made it before she died.”
“When did she die?”
“Four years ago. Isn’t that right, Refaat Effendi?”
Refaat crosses his legs. His black shoes are shiny in the faint light: “Yeah, that’s right. Four years.”
Abdel ’Alim throws in: “Still nobody knows whether she died by God’s hand or somebody killed her.”
Dr. Aziz says: “Of course, she was killed. Her car crashed into the water without a driver. Where did he go?”
The turbaned sheikh asks: “So who killed her?”
Father says: “The British Secret Service. She was a spy for the Germans.” She lets father out for ten minutes to go to the bathroom. She goes with him all the way to the door and waits there until he comes back out. She leads him back to the room as she watches him carefully. He tries to touch her but she says: “Don’t try it. You’re a German spy and you have to go to jail. Or would you rather I tell the police and make a big scene?” I sneak inside the room with him. She locks us into the room. My father makes a joke of it. He says: “It is written for me to go to prison and this one sure is better than the government jail.” To the right, there is a stack of living room chairs piled on top of each other. Their bed with its brass posts stands to our left. He tells me to take the pan out and fill it up and see what happens. I knock at the door for her to open. I fill the pan, spying on her at the same time. I rush back to the room to tell him.
Dr. Mandour says: “Queen Nazli is the one who planned the whole murder. She was jealous of her.”
I become interested now that they’re talking about the king’s mother. Father asks: “Why?”
“Because of Ahmad Hassanein Pasha.”
“What about him?”
“She was his mistress.”
“Who? Ismahan?”
“Ismahan at first, then the queen.”
He talks about the crisis in cinema and theatre. He says the producers made huge profits during World War II by making comedies and fluff. Then the actors started getting salaries that nobody had dreamed of. This attracted everyone and their mother into the business of film production until the standard of films started to sink, and they went all the way down to appealing to the basest instincts of the lowest common denominator. I lean over to father and whisper in his ear: “I want to see Ismahan’s film.” He says to me sharply: “Inshallah.”
~ ~ ~
He drags the desk chair to the balcony. The alley is dark. A faint light shows in some of the windows and balconies. He grumbles about the heat. Takes off his skull cap. He tries to fan his face with it. I stand next to him. We notice Siham leaning on her elbows in the frame of their window. The engineering student is next to her. Fatima comes to us with a stalk of sugar cane in her hand. She sees where we are looking and says that Siham became pregnant by the student and that is why they rushed into a quickie marriage. Father growls at her: “What do you care?”
She is barefoot as she sits down cross-legged on the clean bare floor tiles. She peels the stick of cane and carves off a piece with her knife and offers it to father. He laughs and says he cannot chew it. She gives it to me instead. I bite it and start to chew and keep on until it is just pulp that I spit out and throw on to the plate. She stretches her legs out in front of her. She throws the second piece to the side, saying that it’s too stringy.
The light from the electric lamp grows dim. She gets up to prepare the gas lamp, thinking that the electricity is going to be cut soon. He shouts at her: “Put on some slippers.” She comes back with a plate full of persimmon seeds. She sits down cross-legged and her robe comes up to show her thighs. I sit in front of her on the floor. I take a few seeds. She hides her hands behind her back, then puts them in front of her in fists. She rests them on her bare thighs. I say: “Eeny Meeny, Sayyid Ameeny. Put it all, on, this, one.” I point to her right fist and she pulls back her hand, laughing. My hand lands on her bare thigh. Father says: “It’s chubby, isn’t it?” I grab the flesh of her thigh and answer: “Chubby.”
She says: “Even the hebb al’azziz snacks cost more. Everything’s gone up.” Father says Egyptians have always suffered from bad rulers and rising prices. In the days of the Mamelukes, they suffered from the rising taxes to the point where they chanted in the streets: “Hey Bardissi, why do you squeeze me? You eat off my bankruptcy!” I ask him to tell us one of his stories. He says he once went on a trip to Turkey and toured the magnificent Yildiz Palace. Its bathroom was pure marble with fancy French toilets. He felt nature’s call, so he sat on one. When he was finished, he turned the tap and was surprised to feel something strange brushing against his thighs, as though it were human hands. He jumped up and found tiny streams of water running down in all different directions.
You can tell she is impressed: “They did that in the days of the caliph?”
“What do you mean caliph? You don’t understand a thing. When Istanbul was destroyed in the earthquake and they came to pull the people up from underneath the rubble they found all the men and women clinging to each other like this.” He locks the fingers from one hand into the other.
“Aren’t they Muslims?”
“The real Islam was in the days of the prophet and the Rashidian Caliphate.” He tells us about the prophet and his devoutness. Then about Omar Ibn Khattab and his sense of justice. Then Ali Ibn Abi Talib and his two sons.
I ask him if he participated in the revolution of 1919 and he says: “I sure did. I left the bureau where I worked with the other clerks. We climbed into a carriage and rode through the streets, chanting ‘Down with British rule,’ and ‘Long live Saad Zaghloul.’ ”
Fatima asks him: “Have you seen lots of countries, Sidi?”
He says: “Not many.”
“Tell us about them, Sidi.”
He says: “I’ll tell you, but give me the jar first.” She pushes herself up and goes to get one of the three jars placed on the tray resting on top of the ledge surrounding the balcony, so they can cool. He sips from it and takes a deep breath. He tells her to make sure the other two are full. She takes one inside to fill it up. She comes back and puts it on the tray between the lemon and the cucumber.
Father sits back in his chair. He lights up his dark colored cigarette. He says: “The first time was when I went to Sudan with the army. Um Nabila, God rest her soul, came along with me. She was pregnant with Nabila too. We rented a whole house. It was hot as hell. I looked for somebody at the place to help us get our cots unfolded but there wasn’t anyone around. I saw two guys wearing white, resting under a tree. They were each propped up on one elbow playing a game of tic-tac-toe. One of them was chewing on something that made his teeth as black as coal. I called out: ‘Hey, you guys!’ but it was like calling to the wind. I heard Um Nabila scream. I ran back and found her back against the wall. Her face was yellow and her eyes were fixed on an untied cloth bundle and a tiny bug, a scorpion with its tail in the air. I went to smash it but I missed. It ran to the wall and escaped through the window. Um Nabila threw herself into my arms. I gave her a glass of water to drink. We had to sleep inside a big mosquito net and we put cans full of water under each leg of the bed.”